The Workers’ Opposition emerged as a faction within the Bolshevik Party through the Civil War and was ordered to dissolve just a few years later at the Tenth Party Congress. Despite this, the Opposition left their mark as harsh critics of rising bureaucratism in the Bolshevik Party and state, opponents of specialists, advocates for expanded workers’ democracy and trade-union control of industry.

This session will explore the history and arguments of the Workers’ Opposition. Were they right to call out bureaucratism in the Bolshevik Party as early as they did? How could their proposals have reinvigorated democracy? And was Lenin correct to declare the faction a syndicalist deviation that couldn't exist within the Party?